I understand why people think Maciej has a "vendetta" against YC, but I definitely do not. We considered joining YC's last summer session, after Altman generously invited us. I've recommended several startups to YC, over the objections of other friends to some of the same startups, and YC has made money as a result. I'm personal friends with both current and former YC partners, and numerous YC founders. I started a VC-funded startup in '99-'00 and worked for another VC-funded startup for 4 years after that, and attempted to raise money in '05: I am painfully aware of how abusive Silicon Valley was to tech founders prior to YC, and of all the work YC has done to remediate those abuses. I often feel like YC gets a bad rap. In fact: I even feel like Paul Graham often gets a bad rap.

But Paul Graham and Sam Altman are comprehensively wrong about Thiel, and I would be doing them no favors at all to pretend otherwise.

I'm Catholic. I come from an Irish Catholic family. I have at last count 13,492 first cousins. I do not know all the names of my aunts and uncles. But I do know that most of them are... "aggressively" pro-life. Some of them support Trump, because they feel a moral obligation to vote for whomever is going to appoint pro-life judges. I do not hold Trump support against my family.

Despite the fact that half of HN seems to think I'm a Republican, I am not. But I have plenty of Republican friends. Most of them have repudiated Trump and think he's a disaster for the party. But some of them believe in good faith that the cause of limited government is better served by Trump than by Hillary Clinton. I think they're gravely mistaken. But I don't hold that against them.

I'm fine with doing business with any of these people.

However, if you're in the audience at a Trump rally whooping and hollering your approval for Trump's claim that some women are too ugly to have been assaulted by him, I want nothing to do with you, at least until you've repudiated that disgusting notion.

If you're the person telling reporters that you're going to perform much-needed "racial profiling" at polling places on election day, to intimidate minorities from voting, I want nothing to do with you, at least until you've repudiated that disgusting notion.

If you're a billionaire who has stood on the largest imaginable stage and told the nation on live television that Donald Trump is the only honest candidate, and who donated $1.25MM to the Trump campaign after he threatened to jail his political opponent and started a national tour inciting white voters to distrust the votes of minorities in a rigged election, then you aren't a supporter of the Trump campaign. You are part of the Trump campaign. I want nothing to do with you.

Nobody who claims they'll "join the resistance" after Trump wins can coherently argue otherwise.

I don't demand that Altman and Graham sever ties in any formal way with Thiel. I don't know what that would entail or what's going on behind the scenes. But I do require them not to support Thiel publicly --- at least, if they're going to claim to be part of the resistance against Trump. You can't oppose Trump but defend the Trump campaign.